MIDDLE EAST: Still Looking for a Breakthrough

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When Israeli Premier Yitzhak Rabin flew to Washington last week for talks with President Ford, his El Al jetliner landed at New York's Kennedy Airport. Rabin then boarded a U.S. military jet for the hop between Kennedy and Andrews Air Force Base outside the capital. "Please don't call it the shuttle," an Israeli diplomat jokingly implored TIME Correspondent Strobe Talbott as Rabin disembarked at Andrews. Despite the effort at humor, the Israelis were in no mood to link Rabin's trip to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's long-playing diplomatic shuttle between Cairo and Jerusalem, which ended in a stalemate three months ago.

Following closely upon Ford's summit meeting with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in Salzburg, Rabin had flown to Washington both to learn the results of that meeting and to explore the possibilities of a second-stage disengagement agreement in the Sinai. Two intense days of talks between Rabin and the President and Secretary of State were less than totally satisfying to either side: they concluded with only an agreement that Kissinger would return to the Middle East once more in midsummer for talks before he is scheduled to meet with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko in Europe. What might happen after that is unclear: Rabin, like Sadat, discouraged the idea of Kissinger's resuming his shuttle. The main reason: it would tend to promote unrealistically high expectations, and exacerbate the crisis condition.

Meeting newsmen at the conclusion of the White House talks, the Premier wearily discouraged speculation that any Middle East peace breakthrough was imminent. "I don't believe I have received all the answers I want to know," he said. "Egypt has not facilitated the movement toward peace." Rabin was disappointed to learn from Ford that Sadat was not yet willing to make one political concession on which Israel insists —namely, a definite commitment to a specific, long-range time framework for any second-stage disengagement in Sinai. Egypt would like any extensions of the interim agreement on the Sinai to be for an indefinite period of time. Israel insists on signing such an agreement for a specific period of at least three to five years. In return, Jerusalem would be willing to accept Cairo's pledge not to use force during the life of the agreement, rather than the formal declaration of nonbelligerency that Israel demanded during the unsuccessful shuttle.